KALAMAZOO, MI --If chocolate and flowers are getting stale, how about spending Valentine's Day with a National Book Award finalist? Better still, it's free.

Two-time finalist Rachel Kushner will be in Kalamazoo Feb. 14 as part of the Gwen Frostic Reading Series at Western Michigan University. Kushner, who also received a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, will read from her works at The Little Theatre at 8 p.m.

Kushner's 2013 novel, "The Flamethrowers," features Reno, who inadvertently becomes the fastest woman in the world, setting a land-speed record at Nevada's Salt Flats almost as a lark. The novel travels from the modern art scene of 1970s New York to the anarchic movement in Italy.

It was a finalist for the National Book Award and was named one of the Top 10 Books of 2013 by The New York Times.

In its review, the Times said the "The Flamethrowers" is "frequently dazzling," calling it "an irresistible, high-octane mix ... None of the characters in “The
Flamethrowers” are quite what they seem, fabricating pasts as
nonchalantly as they throw together their art. Above all, they hunger to
be seen, to distinguish themselves from the ordinary."

Her first novel,
"Telex from Cuba," was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for
both the 2008 National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and won the California Book Award.

Kushner lives in Los Angeles
with her son, Remy, and her husband, Jason.